Aristotle
Aristotle Born 384 B.C.; died 322 B.C. Ancient Greek philosopher and scholar. Aristotle was born in Stagira and moved to Athens in 367. He became a student of Plato and was aparticipating member of Plato’s Academy for 20 years, until Plato’s death in 347. In the year 343,Aristotle was summoned by Philip, king of Macedonia, to tutor his son Alexander. In 335, Aristotlereturned to Athens and there established his own school (the Lyceum, or peripatetic school). Hedied in Chalcis on the island of Euboea, where he had fled from persecution arising fromaccusations of a crime against religion. He was an advocate of a moderate form of democracy. The works of Aristotle that have come down to us may be divided into seven groups according totheir contents. They are (1) logical treatises, collected in the compilation entitled Organon, whichinclude Categories (Russian translations, 1859, 1939), On Interpretation (Russian translation, 1891),Prior and Posterior Analytics (Russian translation, 1952), and Topics; (2) physical treatises,including Physics, On Coming to Be and Passing Away, On the Heavens, and On MeteorologicalQuestions; (3) biological treatises—''History of Animals, On the Parts of Animals'' (Russiantranslation, 1937), On the Origin of Animals (Russian translation, 1940), and On the Movement ofAnimals, as well as the treatise On the Soul (Russian translation, 1937); (4) works dealing with “firstphilosophy” which consider being as such and consequently have received the title Metaphysics(Russian translation, 1934); (5) ethical works—the so-called Nicomachean Ethics (dedicated toNicomachus, Aristotle’s son; Russian translations, 1900, 1908) and the Eudemian Ethics(dedicated to Eudemus, Aristotle’s student); (6) sociopolitical and historical works—''Politics''(Russian translations, 1865, 1911), the Athenian Constitution (Russian translations, 1891, 1937);and (7) works about art, poetry, and rhetoric, including Rhetoric (Russian translation, 1894) and theincompletely preserved Poetics (Russian translations, 1927, 1957). Aristotle embraced almost all the branches of knowledge accessible in his time. In his “firstphilosophy” (“metaphysics”), he criticized Plato’s doctrine of ideas and provided a solution to theontological relationship between universals and particulars. The particular is that which exists only“somewhere” and “now”; it is perceivable by the senses. The universal is that which exists in anyplace and at any time (“everywhere” and “always”), and appears under definite conditions in theparticular, through which it becomes known. The universal constitutes the object of scientificknowledge and is attained by the mind. In order to explain what exists, Aristotle employed fourcauses: (1) the essence and core of being, by means of which every object is what it is (formalcause); (2) matter and what lies beneath it (substratum)—that out of which something originates(material cause); (3) moving cause, the beginning of motion; and (4) final cause—that for the sakeof which something is done. Although Aristotle acknowledged matter as one of the first causes andconsidered it to be a certain kind of essence, he saw in it only a passive principle (a potential tobecome something). Moreover, he attributed all activity to the remaining three causes; to theessence of being—form—he ascribed eternity and immutability, and he considered the source of allmotion to be the unmoved but moving principle—god. Aristotle’s god is the “prime mover” of theworld, the highest goal of all forms and formations developing in accord with their own laws.Aristotle’s doctrine concerning “form” is the doctrine of objective idealism. Nevertheless, as Leninremarked, this idealism is in many respects “more objective and removed, more general thanPlato’s idealism, and therefore in natural philosophy it is more often equal to materialism” (Poln.sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 29, p. 255). Motion, according to Aristotle, is the transition of somethingfrom a potential to an actual state of being. Aristotle distinguished four kinds of motion: qualitative,or change; quantitative—increasing and decreasing; displacement—spatial movement; and comingto be and passing away, which could be included among the first two kinds. According to Aristotle, every genuinely existing object is a unity of “matter” and “form,” and “form” isan inherent “appearance” that substance takes. One and the same object of the sensory world maybe regarded both as “matter” and “form.” Copper is “matter” in relation to a sphere (“form”) which iscast from the copper, but the very same copper is “form” in relation to the physical elements whichare combined, in Aristotle’s view, to form the substance of copper. Thus, all reality turns out to be asequence of transitions from “matter” to “form” and from “form” to “matter.” In his doctrine of knowledge and its aspects, Aristotle distinguished “dialectic” from “apodictic”knowledge. The sphere of the former is “opinion” gained from experience, whereas the sphere of thelatter is trustworthy knowledge. Although opinion may also attain an extremely high level ofprobability in its content, Aristotle considered that experience is not the last instance oftrustworthiness in knowledge because the highest principles of knowledge are directly contemplatedby the mind. Aristotle saw the goal of scientific knowledge as the complete definition of an object,achievable only by combining deduction and induction: first, knowledge about each separateproperty must be gained from experience and, second, the conviction that this property is essentialmust be proved by the conclusion of a special logical form—the categorical syllogism. With hisdoctrine of proof, the research on the categorical syllogism conducted by Aristotle in his Analytics''became the central part of his logical teaching. Aristotle understood the connection between thethree terms of the syllogism as a reflection of the connection between consequence, cause, andcausal agent. The basic principle of the syllogism expresses the connection between general class,less general class, and the particular object. The aggregate of scientific knowledge cannot besubsumed under a single system of concepts because there is no such concept which could be thepredicate of all the other concepts. For Aristotle, therefore, it seemed necessary to indicate all thehigher general classes—the categories—under which the remaining classes of being could besubsumed. Aristotle’s cosmology, for all its achievements (the inclusion of all visible celestial phenomena andthe movements of the stars in one harmonious theory), was in several respects backwardcompared to the cosmology of Democritus and the Pythagoreans. The influence of Aristotle’sgeocentric cosmology remained paramount until the period of Copernicus. Aristotle was guided bythe planetary theory of Eudoxus of Cnidos, but he ascribed a real, physical existence to theplanetary spheres. In this view, the universe consists of a number of concentric spheres moving atvarious speeds and driven into motion by the extreme sphere of the immovable stars. The“sublunar” world—that is, the region between the moon’s orbit and the earth’s center, is an area ofdisordered, uneven movements, and all the bodies in this region consist of the four lower elements—earth, water, air, and fire. As the heaviest element, the earth occupies the central position, andabove it in sequence are distributed encircling layers of water, air, and fire. The “superlunar” world—that is, the region between the moon’s orbit and the extreme sphere of the immovable stars, is anarea of eternally even movements, whereas the stars themselves consist of a fifth, most perfectelement—the ether. In biology one of Aristotle’s meritorious services is his doctrine of biological expediency, based onobservations of the expedient structure of living organisms. Aristotle saw examples of nature’sexpediency in such facts as the growth of organic structures from seeds, the variousmanifestations of the expeditiously acting instinct among animals, the mutual adaptability of theirorgans, and so on. In his biological works, which served for a long time as the fundamental sourceof knowledge in zoology, Aristotle provided a classification and description of numerous animalspecies. The body was considered to be the material of life, whereas its form was the soul, whichAristotle called entelechy. Corresponding to the three main classes of living beings (vegetable,animal, and human), Aristotle made the distinction between three souls, or three parts of the soul—vegetative, animal (capable of sensation), and rational. In ethics Aristotle placed above everything the contemplative activity of reason (dianoetic virtues),which, in his opinion, contained in itself its own particular pleasure, strengthening its energy. In thisideal was expressed the separation—characteristic of slave-owning Greece during the fourthcentury B.C.—of physical labor, which was the fate of the slaves, from intellectual labor, which wasthe privilege of free citizens. Aristotle’s moral ideal was god—the most perfect philosopher, or“thought thinking itself.” The ethical virtue, which Aristotle conceived as the rational regulation ofone’s activity, was defined by him as the mean between two extremes (“metriopathy”). Forexample, generosity is the mean between miserliness and squandering. Art was regarded by Aristotle as a special kind of cognition, based on imitation. He ranked it as anactivity which depicts that which could be on a higher level than historical knowledge, which has asits object the reproduction of momentary, individual events in their bare, factual nature. This view ofart allowed Aristotle (in his ''Poetics and Rhetoric) to develop a profound theory of art, close to thatof realism. He also put forth a doctrine of artistic activity and theories concerning the epic anddrama. Aristotle distinguished three good and three evil forms of governing a state. He considered thoseforms good within which the possibility for making a profit from the use of power was excluded andwherein power itself would be used to serve the entire society. Such forms include monarchy,aristocracy, and “polity” (the power of the middle class), based on a combination of oligarchy anddemocracy. Tyranny, pure oligarchy, and extreme democracy, on the other hand, were consideredby Aristotle to be the evil, degenerate variations of these forms. As an advocate of the city-state(polis) ideology, Aristotle was opposed to large state formations. He based his theory of the stateon an enormous amount of factual material on the Greek city-states which he had studied andwhich had been collected in his school. The doctrine of Aristotle, whom Marx called the summit ofancient Greek philosophy (see K. Marx and F. Engels, Iz rannikh proizv. 1956, p. 27), had anenormous influence on the subsequent development of philosophical thought. V. F. ASMUS On the basis of his ethical and psychological conceptions, Aristotle developed a theory ofeducation for “freeborn citizens.” According to Aristotle, the three aspects of the soul should havethree corresponding and interconnected aspects of education—physical, moral, and intellectual.The goal of education consists in developing the higher aspects of the soul, both rational andanimal (the will). Natural endowments, habits, and intellect are in Aristotle’s opinion the motivatingforces of development upon which education must be based. Aristotle was the first in pedagogichistory to attempt to divide education into periods according to age. Regarding education as ameans for strengthening the state structure, he considered that there should be only state-administered schools and that in them all citizens except slaves should receive the sameeducation, which would orient them toward state order. Aristotle’s economic doctrine was based on the premise that slavery was a natural phenomenonand must always be the basis of production. He studied the relationships between goods andmoney and came close to understanding the difference between a natural economy and theproduction of goods. Aristotle distinguished two kinds of wealth—the aggregate of consumer valuesin use and the accumulation of money (or the aggregate of exchange values). The source of thefirst kind of wealth was considered by Aristotle to be production—agriculture and crafts—and hecalled it natural production since it arises as a result of productive activity directed at satisfyingpeople’s needs and because its scope is limited by those needs. The second kind of wealth wascalled unnatural by Aristotle because it arises from circulation; it does not consist of objects ofdirect consumption, and its scope is in no way limited. Aristotle divided the study of wealth intoeconomics and chrematistics. He understood economics as the study of natural phenomenaconnected with the production of consumer values. In this he also included small-scale tradenecessary for the satisfaction of people’s needs. Aristotle understood chrematistics as the study ofunnatural phenomena connected with the accumulation of money; he included large-scale trade inthis category. Aristotle regarded chrematistics negatively. Contrasting economics with chrematistics led Aristotle to an analysis of the inner nature of goodsand their exchange. He was the first to note the distinction between value in use and exchangevalue. He attempted to analyze exchange value, but since he did not understand labor’s role in thecreation of the value of goods, he asserted that only money makes it possible to compare variousgoods. Marx wrote: “Aristotle’s genius is revealed precisely in the fact that he discovered therelationship of equivalence in expressing the value of goods” (K. Marx and F. Engels, Sock., 2nded., vol. 23, p. 70). Marx also noted that Aristotle provided a splendid explanation of how the need arose to assign thecharacter of money to a specific good that has value from exchange trade between variouscommunities (Ibid., vol. 13, p. 100, note 3). But Aristotle did not understand the historicalexpediency of money, and he considered that it had become the universal means of exchange as aresult of agreement. Aristotle regarded money as a means of circulation, a measure of value, andaccumulated wealth. WORKS Aristotelis opera, vols. 1–5. Published by Academia Regia Borussica. Berlin, 1831–70. REFERENCES Kazanskii, A. P. Uchenie Aristotelia o znachenii opyta pripoznanii. Odessa, 1891. Buzeskul, V. P. “Afinskaia politiia” Aristotelia kak istochnik dlia istorii gosudarstvennogo stroia Afindo kontsa 5 v. do n. e. Kharkov, 1895. Karpov, V. Naturfilosofiia Aristotelia i ee znachenie ν nastoiashchee vremia. Moscow, 1911. Zelinskii, F. F. Pedagogicheskie vozzreniia Platona i Aristotelia. Petrograd, 1916. Losev, A. F. Kritika platonizma u Aristotelia. Moscow, 1929. Aleksandrov, G. F. Aristotel’. Moscow, 1940. Kechek’ian, S. F. Uchenie Aristotelia o gosudarstve i prave. Moscow-Leningrad, 1947. Reuel’, A. L. Ekonomicheskoe uchenie rabovladel’cheskogo obshchestva. Moscow, 1959. Lukasiewicz, J. Aristotelevskaia sillogistika s tochki zreniia sovremennoi formal’noi logiki. Moscow,1959. (Translated from English.) Akhmanov, A. S. Logicheskoe uchenie Aristotelia. 1960. Asmus, V. F. “Iskusstvo i deistvitel’nost’ ν estetike Aristotelia.” In the collection Iz istoriiesteticheskoi mysli drevnosti i srednevekov’ia. Moscow, 1961. Zubov, V. P. Aristotel’. Moscow, 1963. Dovatur, A. Politika Politii Aristotelia. Moscow-Leningrad, 1965. Bonitz, H. Aristotelische Studien, parts 1–5. Vienna, 1862–67. Maier, H. Die Syllogistik des Aristoteles, parts 1–2. Tübingen, 1896–1900. Brentano, F. Aristoteles und seine Weltanschauung. Leipzig, 1911. Ross, W. D . Aristotle. London, 1923; 5th ed., 1956. Robin, L. Aristote. Paris, 1944. Allan, D. D. The Philosophy of Aristotle. Oxford, 1952. Bonitz, H. Index Aristotelicus. Berlin, 1955. Theiler, W. “Die Entstehung der Metaphysik des Aristoteles.” Museum helveticum, 1958, year 15,fasc. 2. BIBLIOGRAPHY Totok, W. Handbuch der Geschichte der Philosophic, vol. 1. Frankfurt am Main, 1964.